Kyle Devitte: The Art of a Major League Lacrosse 2-Pointer

Week 2 in Major League Lacrosse was full of blowouts that were packed with dive shots that were bursting with inconsequence. We’ve already had the most lopsided drubbing in recent memory in week one, why dredge through another? The National Lacrosse League guys are trickling back onto rosters and yes, it is quite noticeable who they are and how much box-rust has accumulated on their engines. No, that story is still playing out and we will get to that when all our favourite neighbours to the north and former All-Americans come back to the fields of green.

Trust me. We’ll get there.

There was one performance that stood out among all the others, though. It wasn’t as remarkable as Chazz Woodson’s crease dive or Jovan Miller’s twisting aerial effort. However, crease dives come and go. The Darwinian evolution of distance shooting in the game of lacrosse hit a new mark when Kyle Dixon scored three 2-point goals in one game against the Ohio Machine. In doing so, he surpassed Barrage (it’s French for barrier; they won three MLL championships.) midfielder Roy Colsey as the all-time leader in 2-point goals scored. Colsey played in the MLL for eight years and had 33 career 2-point goals. Dixon has been in the MLL for seven years; he now has 36 career 2-point goals.

Scoring three 2-pointers in a game isn’t exactly unheard of; it’s been done seven times previously in the history of the MLL. In fact, one of those times was Kyle Dixon in 2009 against the Chicago iteration of the Machine. When the 2-point line was introduced in the inaugural season of the MLL, it was scoffed at; “just another gimmick to lure in new fans,” “stupid idea,” “worse than an offset stick,” etc. (Yes, it was that long ago that people still groused about offset sticks. We are all very old).

I’m sure there are people who will tell you that they are used to the 2-point line now, and maybe if they have never seen youth, high school, or NCAA lacrosse they’re telling the truth. But, realistically those people are few and far between. Scoring a 2-pointer is not easy. In fact it’s a lot closer to hitting a major league fastball with a wooden bat than it is draining a deep 3-pointer on a basketball court. I know this because I won a game of horse last week by draining several three pointers against a baseball player. It’s not ironic, just anecdotal.

Regardless, the combination of accuracy and velocity needed to score from over 15 meters out on a regular goalie is immense. How much harder is it to score on an MLL-caliber goalie? What is the technique that works best? Cro-hop into a sidearm rip? Hard step into an overhand bomb? How about a casual three-quarter explosion from a casual walk? Kyle Dixon scores with all of those techniques. He varies his release point, changes his plane and lets his hands go like heavyweight boxers used to do back before teen idols carried their belts into the ring for them.

The truth is the 2-pointer hasn’t evolved into the game-changer that the MLL hoped it would be. Sure, teams have tried to draw up plays for 2-pointers at the end of games, but only if they’re down by two goals. Last week, the Long Island Lizards were down to the Chesapeake Bayhawks by two goals with a little over a minute left in the fourth quarter. On the league conference call Long Island coach Joe Spallina explained that, “We thought about going for a 2, but we thought we had a better chance of going 1 and 1; Greg [Gurenlian] was doing great on face-offs, and we had confidence in him to win that draw.” The difficulty of drawing up a play for a 2-pointer isn’t necessarily the issue; it’s the difficulty of making the shot compared to getting two goals in succession.

Two-pointers have become a particularly powerful weapon to punish mistakes made by the defense in transition and man-up. You don’t see a lot of-2s taken with a defender draped on the shooter — that would be lunacy and no one is that good. Again, the power and accuracy needed to make a 2-pointer on a world-class goalie is too immense to generate with a stick jammed into your ribs. So, teams have positioned their big shooters at the top of the arc on man up to get a more favorable angle to convert when an open look presents itself.

Transition opportunities occur when teams leave the trailing midfielder on a break — MLL players don’t always look to draw and dump. With the 2-point line they can look to draw and swing to the top of the arc for a backbreaking two. Denver and Chesapeake do this very effectively as both have midfielders that can run and rifle.

Really, no team has relied on the 2-pointer itself to win games, but players like Kyle Dixon open up the door for the possibility in the future. The 2-pointer started out as a gimmick and evolved into a way for teams to put games away before the shots need to drop.

The 2-pointer isn’t a game-tying shot or a game-winning shot: it’s a game breaking shot.